Toph's Hiding
by canadiannotamerican
Summary: Toph Beifong is thirty-two years old. She's strong, independent, successful, and she's just had her life turned upside down.
1. The Less Than Heroic Rescue of Toph

Okay, so firstly I would like to apologize to anyone who's been waiting for me to update Avatar: The Next Cycle, but I got distracted when I started writing this story and for some reason I just couldn't stop. Just a heads up, this story is COMPLETE, but I will be updating the chapters periodically. Rest assured that I will now go back to writing my other stories and this monstrosity is no longer a distraction. That being said, hopefully you enjoy it.

I do not own Avatar or any of its characters. And if you think I do, I'm flattered, but you're a crazy person.

* * *

That was the last time Toph let Heng choose where they stopped for dinner. At least she assumed that's what was going on. Her meal from last night's patrol was the only thing she could think of that could be causing her this kind of distress, but she wasn't about to let a simple upset stomach keep her from going into work that morning. She had things to do damn it!

Maybe she wouldn't be skipping work today, but after crouching in front of her toilet for half an hour, Toph knew she was going to be late. It didn't matter though. She was the Chief of Police and while she might get some light hearted ribbing from her officers, there was no one around to get her in actual trouble for being a little late to work. She could power through this and be on the streets again by lunch.

Actually, maybe lunch wasn't such a good idea.

Eventually her stomach settled down just as the shrill ring of her telephone began to assault her ears.

"Yes, what is it?" she croaked into the receiver.

"Chief?" Oh, great. It was Heng. He was probably wondering why she wasn't out on patrol with him yet. It was his stupid fault anyway.

"Who else would be answering my phone exactly?" she snapped. He didn't deserve it but... no. He deserved it.

"I just thought... sorry Chief. You were supposed to be at work twenty minutes ago and we were waiting for you-"

"Get to the point," Toph said. People tended to get flustered around her when she sounded angry and while she was used to it, it was still very annoying.

"We have a lead on the whereabouts of the leader of the Dong gang. We were kind of hoping-"

"The Dong gang?" The Dong gang was a group of waterbenders that specialised in fighting with ice. They'd been sending death threats to city officials for months trying to intimidate the police into leaving a part of the city alone for their own personal exploits. Like Toph was going to let _that_ happen.

"Uh, ya. We were hoping to send a team to apprehend them..."

"I'm on my way to headquarters now," Toph said. "Don't do anything stupid until I get there."

"No, of course not Chief. We'll leave you in charge of doing anything stupid."

"Don't get smart with me Heng," Toph said, though her voice had softened somewhat. She just needed some routine to distract her from the churning in her stomach, and a little friendly banter was apparently just what the healer ordered. Now that she very likely had a good old fashioned fight to look forward to later in the day, Toph grinned.

She was beginning to feel better already.

It took Toph about ten minutes to walk over to the police station, but when she got there she was feeling much better. Her stomach was still off, but she was getting hungry and had managed to grab some bread from a bakery on her way there. All in all, she was in a pretty good mood when she and her officers rode up to the apartment complex where they believed the leader of the Dong gang was hiding.

The entire street was very quiet, which Toph found odd. It was a beautiful warm day, which would usually find a neighbourhood like this one crawling with parents and their young children, trying to make the most out of the weather. Today there was a young couple wandering at the far end of the block, but aside from that, even the park in the middle of the street was devoid of human activity. Toph gestured to her officers to stay put while she felt around with her seismic sense.

The apartment building they were raiding definitely had people in it, and not just in the apartment where they expected to find the Dong gang's leader. There were groups of people in each apartment, mostly huddled together as though they were expecting something. Some kind of danger.

"Ling?" Toph asked quietly. One of her younger officers jumped, startled at being addressed.

"Yes Chief?" she said.

"Who exactly did you get the intel from about the Dong gang?"

"Um, someone came into the office this morning who had been attacked by them..." Or _claiming_ to have been attacked by them. Toph cursed herself for not asking more questions before they headed out. _She_ should have interrogated the alleged victim herself. Stupid _stupidSTUPID!_

"Everyone stay on your toes. They're expecting us."

"How do you- OW!" Heng stumbled back slightly, a hand flying to his neck. "What the fuck!?" There was something small stuck in his neck. A shard of ice?

Toph heard another officer hiss in pain as he was struck as well. She growled in frustration, reaching out with her seismic sense to figure out who was shooting ice shards at them. She felt Heng's pulse slow as he stumbled sideways while one of the ice shards embedded itself in her own bare foot.

Fuck. They were being drugged.

She could feel a vague numbness in her foot around where the shard had struck and kicked sharply at the object to get it out of her skin, though she knew it was probably too late to stop the drug from taking hold. Her seismic sense in that foot was already becoming slightly muted and Toph found herself having to concentrate extra hard in her search for their attackers as she backed her officers up into an ally in an attempt to give themselves some cover. She felt one of the families in the apartment building next to them break apart from each other and head for the window.

Shit _shitSHIT!_

"Get ready to defend yourselves!" she hissed to the people behind her.

"Against who?!" Shouted Ling, who had been dragging a partially conscious Heng beside her. Her question was answered as the "family" from the building next to them revealed themselves to be members of the Dong gang, and they were wielding large leather pouches of water.

One of them shot a coating of water at the ground beneath them, covering it in a slick layer of ice. Toph quickly shot one of her hands upwards, hitting their nearest attacker with a pillar of concrete that shattered through the ice above it. It hit the man in the shoulder, which wasn't exactly where Toph had been aiming, but the ice under her feet left her with a barrier of unbendable material that was making it harder and harder for her to see. She was also starting to feel dizzy.

Luckily her officers had taken their cue and started their own assault. Toph sidestepped her way across the frigid surface, trying to find a spot of solid ground to help her see better. She numbly felt someone closing in on her from the left and she launched a metal whip in their direction. As soon as it made contact Toph was rewarded with a detailed feel of the man's movements and she let the cable wrap around his ankle before yanking him onto his back.

Two more of her officers had fallen over, likely due to the drug. Toph was now making her way quickly to the wall of an apartment building she knew was made of beautiful, earthbendingly visible stone. She launched another pillar of rock at someone who was drawing their arm back for an attack, but her movements were becoming sluggish. She felt another ice shard hit her in the neck before she ripped it out and threw it on the ground.

Ice crept up around one of her feet, but Toph had made it to the wall and slapped a hand against it. The stone gave her a better feel for her surroundings and she was able to identify who was controlling the ice that was already half way up her calf. It was one of the four people who were closing in on her. She launched a piece of the wall at the man and stomped her free foot to shake the ground under her and crack open the ice around her leg.

Only one of her officers was still standing, but Toph didn't have time to try and lend the man a hand. She needed to get off of this ice.

Ice was once again trying to creep its way over her feet, but Toph was having none of it. She threw a whip at one of the women trying to trap her, wrapping the metal around the woman's wrist and launching her into the man standing next to her. She was able to rip one of her feet out of the ice and stomped it on the ground, hitting the other woman with a pillar of concrete.

Why was her neck stinging? Was that another ice shard? Toph threw another piece of wall at one of her attackers. There were four gang members lying unconscious around her now, but more were coming. Toph stumbled sideways. Were all of her officers down? She grabbed the wall again just in time to dodge as one of her attackers threw an ice spike in her direction.

Yup, she was the only one still fighting.

And then she was falling over. She felt one of the gang members step on a patch of ground that wasn't covered in ice and Toph used the opportunity to trap the man's foot in the pavement. She rolled onto her back and tried to throw another piece of rock, but the ice under her grabbed her by the arms. She struggled weakly but her strength was failing, her seismic sense was fading, and Toph couldn't figure out where anyone was anymore. She was trapped, blind, and quickly losing consciousness...

* * *

Toph woke up feeling nauseous. She was lying on something hard and was displeased to discover that it wasn't rock.

"Chief?" That sounded like Ling, and she was close. Probably close enough to touch.

Toph opened her eyes, not that it did her much good. "Where are we?" she croaked. She was surprisingly not too banged up from her fight, but whatever had ailed her that morning was not mixing well with whatever drug had knocked her out. Her stomach churned and she prayed she could keep it under control.

"Some kind of wooden cell," said a deep voice from farther away. It was one of her other officers, by the name of Nu. Who else had she brought with her? Heng, Gan, Kai... heck, there were a whole bunch with her that weren't metalbenders as well. Were they all there? Toph hated not being able to tell.

"Is everyone okay?" she asked as she tried to push herself upright. She managed to prop herself up on one arm but swayed dangerously. Somebody grabbed her shoulder to stop her from falling over. Smaller hands. Probably Ling.

"Ya, you're the last one to wake up," said Nu. "I think you got hit with a few more of those ice darts than the rest of us."

Toph grunted and managed to sit completely upright. Maybe it wasn't the smartest move what with the way she was swaying, but she didn't intend to stay lying on the floor. She picked at the sleeve of what should have been her uniform, only to discover that she was wearing a shirt made of some kind of rough fabric. Who had changed her? Her hair was down too. Someone had taken her headband.

She fell back slightly, managing to catch herself with one hand as Ling steadied her again by the shoulders. Toph fumbled blindly behind with her other hand, trying to find something to lean against and steady herself.

"Are you alright Chief?" asked Ling.

"Where's the damn wall?!" Toph snapped.

"Right, sorry. It's right behind you, not far." Ling helped guide Toph so she could lean her back against the wall of the cell.

"Thanks," Toph mumbled. She ran a hand along the thick wooden bars. They felt sturdy. "Have our captors come by to check on us?" she asked.

"Not yet," said Ling.

"Hm." Toph leaned her head back against the bars and blinked lethargically. "Ling?"

"Ya?"

"Did they leave us a bucket or anything to piss in?"

"Uh, ya... why?"

"No reason... I just-" Toph swallowed. "I think I'm going to be sick."

* * *

Toph in general felt like shit, but apparently she wasn't the only one. The drug had left all of her officers feeling vaguely ill, but Toph was the only one to actually throw up. It was embarrassing, but she reminded herself that she had been significantly more drugged than the others.

Her officers also weren't used to seeing her so frail and... blind. It pissed Toph off that there was nothing she could do about that. She wanted to fling rocks, but either she was too far away from any earth to feel it, or that drug had seriously messed with her ability to bend.

Now, an hour after waking up, she was leaning against the wall with her piss bucket close at hand in case she needed it again. She heard what sounded like footsteps coming up a flight of stairs to her right and lifted her head to hear a little better.

"What is it?" asked Heng.

"Someone's coming," Toph said. She glared in the general direction of the noise.

"Try not to get too verbal with them," said Heng. "I don't particularly look forward to being beaten to a pulp because you decided to piss off our captors."

"Oh please, Heng. I'm smarter than that." Toph turned her head in the direction of his voice and grinned toothily. "I'm just sometimes lacking in self control."

Heng snorted. "Ya, _sometimes_."

The footsteps had apparently made it to the top of the stairs and were now heading towards them. They sounded heavier than the average non-earthbending woman, so Toph came to the conclusion that it was probably a man. The footsteps stopped not far off to her right and Toph was faced with an infuriating silence.

"Well?" she snapped. "You gonna tell us what we're doing here?"

"Patience, Miss Beifong." The voice was male and possessed a soft, comforting quality. Toph wanted to punch it.

"That's _Chief_ Beifong," she said.

"Uh huh."

Toph clenched her fists, but remembering the position they were in she chose to keep her retort to herself. Being in a responsible leadership position really was the most frustrating part of her job.

"Are you going to tell us what you plan on doing with us, or not?" she said after she'd calmed her breathing somewhat.

"We plan on keeping you in this cell for now," the man said. "The rest of our plans aren't really important to you for the time being."

"Not really important?" started Heng, but Toph quickly shushed him.

"Why are you here then?"

"I'm checking up on you. Making sure you're all still alive before we start making our demands." There was a rustle of fabric as the man stepped a couple of feet away. Toph wished she could see what he was doing. "I suppose you'll be wanting something to eat eventually."

Toph grimaced. She didn't really want anything to eat, but the others might. Still, she couldn't keep her sarcasm to herself. There was no way the man hadn't noticed her bucket of puke. "That's very generous of you," she deadpanned.

"Generous, yes. Someone will be by later with your food." He walked away, leaving Toph and her officers alone in their cell.

"So... we're being ransomed?" This time it was Kai who spoke. His voice sounded small. Frightened. Toph didn't know him very well, but she knew that despite his skill in metalbending, he was still young and inexperienced. It wasn't fair for him to be stuck here with the rest of them.

"It's more likely Chief Beifong is being ransomed. I can imagine they'll want to use her as leverage against the other city officials," said Nu.

"So we're disposable..." she heard Kai say quietly.

"Enough!" Toph sat up straighter, trying to pull off as authoritative a posture as she could. "I'm not going to let anything happen to you. If anything, _I'm_ the one who's in danger. As long as you all keep your heads down, they shouldn't have any reason to hurt any of you. So keep your mouths shut and let me do the talking, understood?"

There was a general mumbling of agreement between her officers, but it seemed half-hearted. Toph sighed. She just needed to keep everything together long enough to figure a way out of this damn place.

* * *

Two days later they were still stuck in the same damn wooden cell. Their captors hadn't spent much time with them, except to bring them food and to rough up Toph's face for a photograph they were presumably going to send to the council. Toph had been given a bloody nose and a few bruises, but nothing serious.

She was beyond frustrated and wanted nothing more than to fling some rocks, or to beat the crap out of somebody, or even just to pace around a bit. But there was no earth to bend and she was as blind as a wolf bat- scratch that. She was even _more_ blind than a wolf bat. Besides, there was food sitting around their cell and she didn't fancy the idea of accidentally stepping in someone's rice because she couldn't be bothered to sit still.

So she stayed sitting in the same place for as long as she could. Fumbling around the cell would only remind everyone of just how painfully helpless she was at the moment, and Toph _hated_ looking helpless. She couldn't act, she _shouldn't_ act, so she just sat and waited.

As she was contemplating the consequences of smashing her fist into comforting voice guy's face, Toph heard the sounds of footsteps coming up the stairs once more.

"Again?" asked Heng as Toph tilted her head in response to the noise.

"It's a little soon for them to be bringing us food, right?" said Nu.

"Quiet," Toph snapped. "Remember what I said about keeping your head down."

"Yes Chief."

She heard Heng moving on the other side of the cell and Gan snickered. "I swear, if you're making rude gestures at me-" but she stopped speaking when the footsteps made it to the top of the stairs. There were three people this time. Definitely not a food delivery.

When they entered the room, Toph was sitting as upright as possible, her blind gaze directed towards the door of their cell. "What do you want now?" she asked.

"Things aren't progressing the way we intended," said comforting voice guy. Toph snorted.

"You were expecting some money for me or something?"

"Not quite." The group was stepping closer to the cell and Toph tensed. They were coming in for her.

"What do you think you're doing?" exclaimed Heng.

Toph slowly got to her feet, keeping her face turned towards their captors. "Relax. They probably just want to take some more pictures of my bloody face," she said.

"They don't have a camera."

The cell door clicked open. There was a quiet crackle of ice being formed as three sets of footsteps advanced towards her. Toph's heart thudded in her chest, her eyes widening. She couldn't defend herself. Not like this!

"Stay away from her!" Heng appeared to be standing now, and was moving towards their captors.

"Heng, back off," Toph said. But her warning had no effect. She heard flesh meet flesh and the shuffling of feet as a scuffle took place. Heng grunted, his body thudding to the ground.

"Get off of me," he growled.

"Leave him alone," Toph warned. Her voice was low, eyes narrowed.

Someone stepped towards her. "Or what?" said the calm voice of their captor. "We needed something to send to the council. We were thinking a finger, or maybe... a toe?" Toph's toes curled at the thought of being mutilated. "But maybe a dead cop will do the trick."

There was more ice crackling behind him and Heng's fearful cries became muffled as something covered his mouth. She heard Gan and Ling shout out, but Toph knew what she had to do. They wanted her? They would have her.

Toph yelled as she charged head first at the man in front of her. He stumbled backwards while Toph latched her arms around his midsection. They tripped, and the two of them fell into a tangled mess of limbs as people scrambled to get a hold of her. Toph could smell Heng's sweat, and the sweet scent of a feminine perfume. Hands grabbed at her legs and someone kneed her in the ribs. Toph grunted, but when she felt the fabric of someone's sleeved arm pressing into her face, she bit down and revelled in the pained cry that followed. Something collided with the side of her head and a dazed Toph allowed herself to be hoisted upright.

Ya, she hadn't expected to win that fight.

"Chief!"

"Stay put. That's an _order_ , Heng."

"You want to lose a toe so bad?" said their captor. "Fine."

Toph was roughly shoved against the wall of their cell. Two sets of hands pinned her arms on either side, but her legs remained free. When she felt the heat of her captor's body in front of her, Toph kneed him hard. She grinned.

And then something collided with her abdomen.

Toph hadn't expected the pain that followed. It felt like her insides were being shredded. She wanted to cry out, but the only noise she was able to make was a strangled gasp.

 _What the fuck?!_

She wanted to curl up into a ball, but she was still being pinned to the wall. Instead her legs tried to curl upwards which only resulted in adding extra pressure to her burning gut. She groaned.

"The council is going to give us what we want," said the man. "They just need proper incentive."

He grabbed at one of her legs, but Toph was in too much pain to put up much of a struggle. She felt tears spring to her eyes. She _really_ didn't want to lose a toe.

The only sounds present to Toph were the beating of her heart and her own uneven gasps for breath. She felt like she was going to throw up again. Why did this hurt so much? What did he do to her?

 _Why isn't he cutting off my toe?_

That's when Toph heard it. The faint sound of heavy gusts of air far below them. Solid objects hitting solid objects.

 _Aang!_

"Leave her for now," the man said.

"But," said a female voice.

"We'll finish this later."

The hands let go of her and Toph crumpled to the floor. She wrapped her arms around her midsection with a groan and curled into a ball.

"Oh please. I didn't punch you _that_ hard."

"Fuck you," she ground out through clenched teeth.

Their captors rushed out of the room and the cell door clicked shut as they left. Toph was breathing heavily, waiting for the pain to subside. At least it was starting to get a little more bearable.

A hand grasped her arm. "Are you okay, Chief?" asked Nu.

"I just need a minute," she said hoarsely. "How's Heng?"

"I'm okay," he said from somewhere in front of her. He appeared to still be on the ground.

"Good. Then I won't feel so bad about killing you later," Toph growled.

The pain had definitely gotten better, but it still hurt like a bitch. She tried focussing on her breathing, but it wasn't helping any. She was beginning to wonder just what kind of major damage had been done when a pair of light footsteps all but flew up the stairs.

"Toph!"

"Hey there Twinkletoes," Toph grunted. "How are the kids?" Just then the pain intensified tenfold. Toph gasped and curled in on herself even more, her eyes screwed shut. Aang's soft hands touched her side and Toph jumped slightly. She hadn't even heard him run over.

"Toph, what's wrong?"

"What makes you think something's wrong?" Toph asked sarcastically. She groaned at another wave of pain.

"Uh, Chief?" said Nu. "You're bleeding."

"What? Where?" Toph's eyes grew wide. She heard people moving around her before Aang gently pulled her leg forwards. Under normal circumstances Aang's face would have been knuckle deep in fist city by this point, but Toph was in too much pain to reprimand him for touching her inappropriately. Besides, he probably had a good reason for what he was doing.

"I'll get Katara," he said. There was a note of fear in his voice.

"You brought your pregnant wife with you to a gang raid?"The pain was beginning to subside again and Toph relaxed a little.

"She stayed outside during the fighting," Aang said. "Try not to move too much, okay?"

Aang didn't go down the stairs. Instead there was a gust of wind as he disappeared off to the side. He'd apparently jumped out the window.

Hang on, why had Aang been touching her leg? She'd been hit in the abdomen. "Where, _exactly_ , am I bleeding from?" Toph asked carefully. Her question was answered by silence.

"Um..." she heard Heng say eventually. It didn't matter anyways. Toph was becoming aware of a sticky wetness between her legs. She felt the blood drain from her face. No wonder the Avatar sounded so worried.

When Katara showed up she was moving very quickly. The waterbender dropped something on the floor next to Toph before kneeling down carefully.

"Oh, Toph," she said. The earthbender would have rolled her eyes at the pitying tone her friend had put on, but at that moment there was another wave of cramping that caused her to curl tightly around her abdomen.

"Hang on," Katara said. There was a popping noise followed by a swish of water and Toph felt the cool liquid meld over and around her tightly clasped arms. The pain began to subside as Katara worked, and Toph started to relax. Eventually she moved her arms to give the healer better access to her wounded gut.

Her officers were completely silent. Toph imagined they were all watching her with worried eyes, but she didn't need their pity and she _really_ didn't need them to see her having a weak moment, so Toph glared and hoped it was enough to make them uneasy.

Eventually, Katara stopped. She returned the water back to whatever container she had taken it from. Toph was feeling much better, but there was still a deep, dull ache where Katara had been working.

"You're stable for now," Katara said. "But we should get you to a hospital for proper treatment. And Toph?"

"What?"

"You should have _told_ me you were pregnant."


	2. The Unsurprisingly Unexpected

"She's _what?!_ "

"Pregnant, Sokka. She's pregnant."

"But _how_?"

"I'm going to assume the way people normally become pregnant."

"But she's not seeing anyone right now!"

"She _was_."

"..."

" _Oh_."

Toph lay numbly on her side in the hospital bed. There was no way Sokka and Katara thought they were being quiet out in the hall, but for some reason Toph didn't care. She didn't seem to care about much at the moment. She just felt... numb.

 _Pregnant._

She and her metalbenders had been the last to be freed from their cells. Apparently they had been on the top floor of a wooden tower in the northern part of Republic City's fire district. It wouldn't have been the first place she'd have looked for a waterbending gang, but Toph supposed that's why she'd never found them.

 _I'm pregnant._

The rest of the officers she'd brought with her had been kept in metal cells on the bottom floor of the tower. Far enough away that Toph wouldn't have been able to feel them. Aang had barged through the place with another team of her officers and had taken out the guards easily.

 _There's a life inside of me._

He must have figured a giant wooden tower was the safest place to imprison a group of metalbenders. No wonder he'd found them so quickly when Toph had been chasing after the gang for months. Their capture had been all the detectives needed to pinpoint the gang's hideout. The leader was still absent, but a lot of the gang members were now in custody. That was good, right?

 _She'd driven Kanto away._

So why did she feel so numb?

"Toph?" It was Katara. She'd apparently come into the room at some point and Toph was shocked that she hadn't noticed. What was wrong with her? "How are you holding up?"

"I..." Toph inhaled deeply through her nose. "I don't know."

She heard Katara step closer and then settle herself slowly into a chair by the bed. Toph couldn't help but think about the giant belly her friend was sporting and how it must weigh a ton. She had to be fairly uncomfortable.

"Do you know where he is?" Katara asked.

"No."

"He didn't tell you where he was going?"

"No."

"I see."

Toph felt tears in her eyes. Oh, for Aang's sake, why did she have to be emotional all of a sudden? She swallowed back the lump in her throat and tried to blink away the tears, but it only resulted in one of them slipping down her cheek and soaking into the pillow. Katara shuffled forwards in her chair.

"Oh, Toph..."

She wanted to go back to being numb. Numb was better. Numb didn't have her turning into a blubbering fool in front of her friend. But Toph's breath was becoming uneven and clearly Katara saw something that worried her, because she got up from her chair. The mattress dipped as the woman sat down next to Toph's midsection and a hand began to rub her arm.

"It's okay."

Toph couldn't hold back the tears anymore. She sobbed as Katara held her head, pulling the earthbender up into a hug and letting Toph burry her face in her shirt. Toph could feel Katara's large belly pressed up against her chest and the gentle arms on her back. Katara shushed her, murmuring words of general comfort.

"I can't do this," Toph said through a sob. Katara's hair tickled her face as she moved her head.

"I know it feels that way now, but you just need some time to adjust." Katara didn't let go of her completely as Toph pulled away from the hug. Toph sniffed and wiped her wet nose with the back of her hand. She swallowed the wet lump in her throat as Katara helped her lean back against the bed's pillows.

"Sorry," Toph said. "I just... I feel stupid. I told him to leave, and now..."

"I'm going to go ahead and assume you didn't know you were pregnant-"

"What gave you that idea?" Toph asked sarcastically. She wiped a hand across her face, rubbing the tears away from her watery eyes.

"You made a decision that was right for your relationship. It doesn't matter that you're pregnant. You and Kanto were a bad couple."

"Ya, well. Now I've got a baby with no father."

"And do you think throwing a baby into the mix would have made your relationship better? If anything it would've drawn out something that really shouldn't have been in the first place. Toph, you're in shock. It's a difficult thing to wrap your head around, but you didn't make the wrong decision by breaking up with Kanto. Don't blame yourself for this, okay?"

Toph wiped more of the wetness away from her eyes, but a hand grabbed her wrist.

"Would you quit it?" Katara said. "You're rubbing snot into your eyes."

Toph snorted as Katara handed her a cloth. The earthbender used it to blow her nose before resting her head against the wall behind her. It hit the wood with a _thunk_. "Ugh, the media is going to have a field day with this one," she said.

"Well, until you hold a press conference-"

"A press conference? You and Sokka were talking so loud out there I'm sure the entire hospital heard! There's no hiding this. And if the press gets on this... oh no. My parents..." Toph closed her eyes and groaned.

"They've had to accept a lot of things you've done. They'll get used to this as well," Katara said.

"I'll need to tell them before they read about it in the paper, won't I."

Katara was quiet for a moment. Toph felt her shift in the bed slightly. "You know what?" the waterbender said eventually. "I promised Sokka he could come in and see you after I had a chance to talk to you. I'm sure he's paced a hole in the floor by now."

"Sure. Whatever."

The weight lifted from the mattress as Katara left the room, but Toph wasn't left alone for long.

"Look what I brought you!" Sokka announced from the doorway.

"You're going to have to try that one again, Meathead," Toph said with a glare.

"It's chocolate. Katara said it was okay. Here, try some."

Toph felt something cool and smooth placed in the palm of her hand. She rolled it around a bit.

"You'll have to eat it before it melts," Sokka said from right next to her.

"Where's Katara?"

"She went to the bathroom. That kid is really stressing out her bladder apparently." Sokka was shuffling around to Toph's left. There was a _clack_ as something was put down on the table next to her.

"Hm," Toph said.

"How are you feeling?"

Toph shrugged. The chocolate was starting to get sticky in her hand.

"Toph, engage with me. Come on."

Toph's brow furrowed. She felt a hot anger rise in her chest. "You want to know how I'm doing? Fine," she snapped. "I'm single, pregnant, and hospitalised. The doctors have admitted that they don't even know if the baby is going to be okay so either I suffer the trauma of losing a child _I didn't even know I had_ , or I have to endure becoming a single mother and care for a child I don't know I can properly take care of. How's _that_ for engaging!" Toph was glaring at where she believed Sokka to be standing. Her breathing was heavy and congested from all the crying and she knew she must look like a hot mess. She realised she had clenched her hand into a tight fist, the chocolate oozing out through her fingers.

"Ugh," she mumbled as she started to wipe it off with the cloth Katara had given her.

"Toph, I'm sorry." Sokka's voice said from her left. "I was just trying to cheer you up. If you need to rant, that's fine. I'm here to listen." She heard him sit down in the chair Katara had previously vacated. Toph sighed.

"No, I'm just... frustrated." She balled up the cloth and tossed it half-heartedly at her feet. "I don't think I really want to talk about it right now."

Sokka was uncharacteristically quiet for a moment. "Well, what do you want to talk about?" he asked.

Toph shrugged. "I don't know. Pick something! Where'd Twinkletoes run off to?"

"Oh, fun story," Sokka said. There was a hint of excitement in his voice that had Toph lifting her head out of curiosity. "He and Katara left the kids with the acolytes while they were out and during that time it seems Bumi managed to convince Kya to turn the kitchen into an ice skating rink. Aang's been called in for offspring cleanup duty, though I think he's far more likely to join in himself."

"Kya turned the kitchen into an ice skating rink?" Toph asked. "That's actually impressive."

"Well, it's probably a messy ice skating rink, but you're right. She'll be a pretty impressive bender one day."

"Ya, she will..." Toph stared vacantly ahead. Sokka shifted in his seat as Toph wiped at her nose with the back of her hand, the cloth Katara had given her all but abandoned at her feet.

"Are you sure you don't want to talk about it?" Sokka asked.

"I don't know," Toph said. "I don't think I want to do much at all right now."

"Do you want to be alone?" Sokka asked.

"No."

"Okay, I'll be here. But if you _do_ want to talk, just say so, all right?"

"Thanks." Toph curled up on her side, facing away from Sokka. She wasn't sure what he was going to do in that chair, but she liked knowing he was there.

* * *

Toph took a deep breath. Behind her she heard the squeaky wheels of wooden carts accompanied by the clacking claws of the ostrich horses that drew them. The wind blew her bangs off to the side of her face and she could smell the dampness of rain to come.

People were talking inside the building. She couldn't hear what they were saying, but she could feel them. They were clustered around desks, huddled in groups in the lounge, leaning against walls, talking. Gossiping.

Toph walked inside.

The chatter stopped as soon as the Chief of Police entered the building. People turned their heads to look at the woman as she stood in the front entrance, arms crossed. Yes, this was Toph Beifong, and yes, you were just talking about her.

"Alright, I want to get things cleared up right now," Toph stated firmly and clearly. "Yes, I am pregnant. No, I will not be going on patrol today or any time in the near future." Her officers turned to whisper to each other. Toph heard the secretary at the front desk whisper something about endangering the baby, but she chose to politely ignore the remark. Instead, she pointed sharply at the man standing by the water cooler with three of his fellow officers. "Heng, my office. Now."

Heng's nervous footsteps followed Toph through the crowded room as she strolled past her officers with her head held high. Her assistant started to get up from his desk as they approached, but Toph told him to wait outside as she and Heng entered the office. Heng stood by the door as Toph circled around her desk. She didn't sit down.

"What the fuck did you think you were doing?" she demanded.

"I just- they were going to attack you-"

"I gave you an _order,_ Heng. A direct order that you chose to ignore. What, exactly, do you expect me to do with that?"

"They had a knife, and you- the baby-"

"Did you _know_ I was pregnant when you chose to ignore me?"

"No."

"Then it's not a very good excuse now, is it?"

Heng swallowed. He hadn't moved from the door and his thumbs were wrestling each other behind his back. At least he was standing up straight.

Toph sighed.

"When I tell you to do something, it has to be done. I realise there's a certain amount of protectiveness that we all feel for each other and that can make it hard to let harm come to any of us, believe me, I feel it too. But you _can't_ go around ignoring my instructions just because you think I might get hurt! Understood?"

"Yes ma'am."

"I'm younger than a lot of you, I get that. I'm a woman, I'm blind. There's probably some horrible ingrained need to keep someone like me safe that you're struggling with, but I'm the _Chief of Police_ , Heng, and when I tell you to do something it had damn well get done or you face the consequences!"

"Yes, Chief." Heng's voice quavered. His jaw was set firmly, but she felt his pulse quicken as he stared ahead.

"You're suspended for the next week without pay. For the next month after that, I'll be pairing you up with Midori for weekend night patrols."

Heng groaned. "Midori? Night patrols?"

" _Yes_ , Heng. Thanks to your insubordination, I was stuck in the hospital for _three_ _days_ , not sure if I was still going to be pregnant when I left. I'd say you should consider yourself to be _incredibly fucking lucky_ you're getting off so easily here!" Toph exhaled sharply. "Now get out of my office. And send Guo in on your way out."

Heng shuffled out of the office, head down. Toph stood by her desk as she listened to his muffled voice on the other side of the door. She should probably sit down, but-

"Chief?" Her assistant popped his head through the door. "You wanted to see me?" His voice had a rough quality to it, which Toph had always liked. Rough like rock. Rough like the earth.

"Guo, come in." Toph turned to face him. "It looks like I'm going to be off of patrol for a little while."

She felt him nod as he walked closer to her desk. "Yes, I heard," he said.

"Which means we're going to be spending a lot of time together."

"I suppose so."

"I'm going to need your help with something," Toph said. Guo tilted his head in confusion. "I'm going to have a lot more free time on my hands, and since there's only so much paperwork for us to do, I've been thinking."

"Thinking what, Chief?"

"I'd like to finally learn Braille, and I'm betting I'm going to be needing help with that."

Ever since Toph had heard of this reading for the blind thing, she'd been rather resistant. She'd been illiterate all her life, and she was used to it. But having had to learn to write for her job, even if it was only enough to sign documents or to jot down notes for Guo to decipher later, she felt her inherent need for independence threatened. She would never be independent from Guo, even if she learned to read Braille. But she had the time now, so she might as well use it efficiently. At least this way her schedule could be independent from his. He could transcribe the papers, and she would do the paperwork herself when she had time. "Of course, this means you'll have to learn it as well, if you're up to the task."

"You're kidding, right?" Guo asked incredulously. "I've been pushing you to learn Braille for almost two years now."

"Well, you've won. Happy?"

"A little, yes." She felt him smirk. Smug asshole.

Toph stood next to her desk, spine straight, arms behind her back. She stared ahead, listening to the sounds of the office, listening to the concrete floor beneath her feet. Guo cleared his throat.

"Is everything alright?" he asked.

Toph blinked. "It's weird," she said. "I can feel it now."

"Feel what?"

"The baby. I don't know how I never noticed before, but I can feel it with my earthbending."

Guo shrugged. "You weren't looking for it before, and now you know it's there. Of course you can feel it."

Toph shook her head. This was a line of thought she didn't need to be following at the moment. "You can start looking into finding us a Braille instructor later, right now I need you to do two things for me. First, we need to write a letter to my parents. Second, we need to schedule a press conference."

Guo rushed over to her desk so the two of them could get to work.

* * *

Toph listened, irritated, to the man on the other end of the phone. He wasn't yelling, no, Toph wouldn't expect him to yell at her. But he was very, _very_ disappointed. "I don't know why you didn't just call us," he continued. "Your mother and I certainly wouldn't have expected news like this to come from you in a letter." The unspoken thought was that they had probably expected news like this to come from her eventually. Toph sighed and leaned her arms against the desk. Daddy dearest hadn't been able to reach her at her home, so he'd called the office instead.

"I was probably just trying to avoid this exact conversation," she mumbled.

"Are you talking back to me, young lady?"

"Dad, I'm thirty-two. You can cut the 'young lady' crap already." She heard him inhale sharply on the other end. Ya, she'd probably gone a little too far with her language there, but it was hard to reel it in when she was surrounded by swearing police officers all day.

"You know your mother and I have had _many_ disagreements with you about your life and your career, Toph, but we all agreed that you would do your best to honour the way we raised you. _Nothing_ about this situation is appropriate for a lady of your upbringing, and you're about to plaster is all over the front page!"

"The media already knows I'm pregnant." She heard him inhale again. Apparently he wasn't ready to hear the words "I'm pregnant" coming from his unwed daughter's mouth. "I'm just trying to clear up any confusion the public might be having about the situation."

"And _confirm_ the stories that are being told. You could've pretended they were nothing more than rumours-"

"And then what? Try to hide the obvious signs as I get further along? Or do you and mom want me to go on a little vacation for the next few months so that nobody sees me?" Toph was very aware of how most high society families handled such situations. She was going to have none of that. She had a job to do.

"Your mother will be visiting Republic City in a few weeks," he said. Toph groaned. "You can continue this conversation with her."

"Fine, whatever. I have to go hold a press conference now."

"Goodbye, Toph." She could hear the disapproving frown in his voice.

"Ya, bye Dad."

Toph hung up the phone with a click, relief washing over her. She was glad to have _that_ conversation over with, though she didn't look forward to being confronted by her mother later on.

Toph stepped out of her office to find her second in command waiting by the door with her assistant. "Are you ready, Chief?" asked Guo.

"As ready as I'll ever be," Toph responded. They walked out the front door of the building and faced the crowd of people standing at the bottom of the stairs.

Toph heard the click and shrill whine of cameras going off as she stepped up to the podium, Guo close by her side. Sokka liked to laugh at the horrible pictures reporters took of her. Toph liked to punch Sokka while he was laughing.

People were shouting at her, trying to get her to answer ten thousand questions at once, but Toph just raised a hand to quiet everyone down. "I understand there are a lot of questions that need to be answered right now, so I'm going to try and be as direct as possible," she said. There was still a hum of chatter in front of her, but the shouting had stopped and Toph's voice rang clear across the crowd. "One week ago myself, and a group of my officers, were captured by the Dong Gang and held captive. Their intent was to use me as leverage against the council to gain control over a portion of the city, but thanks to my detectives, and the interference of Avatar Aang, the majority of the people involved in the incident are now in custody." She heard a few reporters try to shout questions at her but Toph only raised her voice.

"It is true that the leader of the Dong Gang is still at large, but he is being tracked as we speak. I would like to send a message to the Dong Gang's leader that the police department, and the Republic City Council, do _not_ respond to threats or blackmail-"

"What about the baby?!" shouted a voice from the middle of the crowd. There was a roar of noise as people joined in the questioning. Was she pregnant? Did she intend to put the baby in harm's way in order to do her job? Was the baby going to be blind too? Toph took a deep breath. She had been ready for this onslaught, but it didn't make the questions any less of a blow.

"I understand that there have been rumours in _some_ papers that I am pregnant," Toph raised her voice above the din and the shouting quieted again. "That I was in the hospital because of the baby and because of what happened during my capture. These rumours are... true." Toph flinched at the explosion of yelling that followed. She wanted to keep her appearance calm, but her poor ears could only take so much of this. More cameras were going off as Toph was assaulted with a suffocating number of questions.

"How long have you known-"

"What possessed you to go after-"

"Is the father of the baby-"

Toph raised a hand again, attempting the quell the masses. "I was unaware at the time that-" but she stopped mid sentence as she felt a horrible cramping in her abdomen. Toph inhaled sharply, mouth clamped shut. She felt the blood drain from her face.

"Chief, is everything alright?" Guo asked, placing a hand on her arm. She shook her head.

Toph felt her heart skip a beat. She didn't know what was happening, but she knew it wasn't good. Was she going to lose the baby right here, in front of a throng of reporters? Her face hardened and she straightened up, despite the pain. She swallowed and took a shaky breath.

"That's all the questions I'll be answering right now," she managed to say. Her voice sounded strained.

Guo guided her away from the podium as the reporters tried to close in. Her officers were already on it though, holding the hoard at bay as Toph headed back into headquarters, her insides burning.

 _What's happening to me?_ Toph though, tears in her eyes.


	3. Motherhood's Unfortunate Link to Poo

"Push!"

Katara's strained cry filled Toph's ears, but she didn't dare leave the room. This was _important_.

Toph hadn't been there during the actual births of Katara and Aang's other two children. She preferred to wait outside with the faint-hearted Snoozles, who wasn't interested in seeing quite that much of his own sister. Toph could see as much of what was going on no matter what side of the door she was standing on, but Katara insisted that it would be good for her to be a part of it this time. This way, Toph would have a better idea of what to expect during her own birthing process.

Toph didn't like what she was feeling.

It was loud, smelly, gooey, and she was pretty sure Katara had pooped on the bed a few minutes ago, though nobody was talking about it. All in all, Toph wanted wholeheartedly to not ever have to go through any of this herself.

It was strange. Toph didn't remember being this appalled the _last_ time she had witnessed a birth. But now...

"You're doing great sweetie," Aang said. He was clutching his wife's sweaty hand as though both their lives depended on it. Toph could feel his panicked heartbeat and chuckled at his nervousness. She'd heard stories of women breaking their husbands hands during childbirth, but Toph was pretty sure that with Aang's grip, he was hurting Katara more than she was hurting him.

"Do you think something about this is funny, Toph?!" Katara's words came out through tightly clenched teeth and Toph recoiled slightly. She raised her hands in defence, preferring not to antagonize her friend at the moment. The two of them had enough trouble avoiding arguments when one of them _wasn't_ in the process of pushing a small human out of her vagina.

"No, no. Twinkletoes has it right. You're doing a fantastic job." Her words sounded hollow to her, but Katara didn't seem to notice. Instead, she cried out in pain and Aang scooted in closer, wrapping his arms around her shoulders. "Keep it up," Toph added lamely.

She could feel it. That baby was just about free.

It wasn't much longer before Katara's strained cries were joined by a set of tiny wails. The doctor was clutching the slippery infant in his comparatively massive hands as a healer and a nurse rushed over to get the newborn cleaned up and settled in his parents arms. "He's amazing," Aang said, once Katara was holding the baby. His wife sniffed wetly, but Toph could feel the massive grin on her face.

"Toph, come over here," Katara said. She was still catching her breath, but the waterbender sounded so... happy.

Toph took a few shaky steps over to her friends. Katara was handing the baby to Aang so that the nurse could get her properly cleaned up. Aang stood up, rocking the crying baby gently.

"He's great," Toph said when she was only a step or two away. This close, her feet were able to get a better feel for the baby's features. He... felt just like any other baby. "What're you gonna call him?"

"Katara allowed me pick this time," Aang said. Toph raised her eyebrows, but Katara smiled as the nurse bustled around her.

"I'll name the next one, I'm sure," the waterbender said.

"So, you two are just going to keep going at it until one of them's an airbender, huh?"

"If I wasn't so exhausted, I would smack you," Katara said. But Toph could hear the happiness in her voice. "Aang, tell her the name."

"His name's Tenzin." Aang took a step closer to Toph and the earthbender gasped as she felt the baby being placed into her unsuspecting hands. "Here."

"Woah, hey!" Toph tried to back away but Aang persisted. Not wanting to let the newly born infant fall to the floor, Toph found herself clutching the bundle tentatively. She realised she had stopped breathing and inhaled shakily.

Aang helped her reposition her arms so that Tenzin's head was resting in the crook of her elbow. Toph's other hand was now free enough for her to reach over and brush a thumb over the little boy's face. He had calmed down since the initial trauma of being pushed out into the world. Toph was able to feel his little round nose, soft, squishy lips, his eyes that blinked irritably as her thumb brushed past a surprisingly plentiful amount of lashes. Toph felt the top of his head.

"Wow, he's got a lot of hair."

Katara chuckled. "He does, doesn't he."

"Your other kids didn't have this much hair when they were born, did they?"

Aang shrugged. "Most baby's don't," he said.

Toph felt weird. Here she was, holding a baby birthed by one of her best friends, and it felt... right. Toph clenched her teeth. No, it felt wrong. She was Toph Beifong, she wasn't mother material. She couldn't feel this comfortable holding a child.

Toph held Tenzin back towards his father. With a shaky breath she cracked a smile. "Well then it's settled. Sugar Queen obviously had an affair, because this baby has _way_ too much hair to be related to you."

"Toph!" Katara said indignantly as Aang let out a barking laugh. "Aang, that's not funny!"

"Congratulations," Toph said as Aang took the baby from her. "You good for Sokka to come in now?" She felt Katara nod.

"Hey, Snoozles!" Toph called towards the door. Tenzin stirred at the sound of her loud voice and Aang cooed at him. "Your sister is _nice_ and covered! You can come in now."

"Oh thank the spirits!" Sokka said as he flung the door open. "I want to see my new nephew!"

Sokka was pushed aside by Bumi who came running into the room, followed by his little sister. Bumi was trying to get a good look at the baby while Kya crawled onto the bed with her mother, far less interested in the bundle her father was holding.

"Calm down, Bumi," Katara was saying. "Uncle Sokka gets to hold him first..."

"Mommy, you're all sticky..."

Toph backed up to the wall and let the family reorient themselves around their newest addition.

* * *

Toph sipped at the cup of tea her mother's servant had prepared for her. She had to admit that the warm liquid was calming her nerves, but she really wished her nerves didn't need calming in the first place. Poppy Beifong was regarding her daughter with a very stern expression.

"Just say it," Toph finally said as she lowered her cup. Her mother tilted her head as she straightened her back some.

"Your father and I are very disappointed, Toph."

"Ya, well _that's_ not new."

Poppy sucked in a breath. "Toph, you know that's not true! Your father and I are very proud of your accomplishments. But sometimes..."

" _Sometimes_ I don't act in a way befitting a lady raised for proper society, I know." Toph sighed. "I wasn't _trying_ to get pregnant."

"You held a press conference! What were you thinking?"

"I was thinking 'Hey, everyone already knows I'm pregnant. At least they'll have the true story instead of whatever rumours they were concocting on their own!'"

"You held a _second_ press conference to explain what happened at the first!"

"Well, the first didn't exactly go as planned now, did it?" Toph let out a hot breath. She'd thought she was miscarrying. Heck, she'd kind of hoped she was. She felt her mother's concerned gaze on her face.

"Toph," Poppy said. "Are you okay?"

"I..." Her emotions were starting to get the better of her again and Toph felt tears forming in her eyes. Stupid hormones. She rubbed them away swiftly with the back of her hand. "I'm not," she admitted. "I'm single and stuck with this... unstable pregnancy. I don't even know if I want to have this baby-"

"So don't."

Toph froze. Had her mother said what she thought she'd said? Poppy was still as a statue, her cup of tea held delicately in her lap.

"Toph, if you don't want to be a mother, don't have the baby. There are ways to get rid of it."

"You want me to get rid of the baby..."

Her mother sighed. "It might be what's best."

"What's best for me, or what's best for the Beifong family reputation?" Toph asked icily. Poppy opened her mouth to respond, but Toph continued before she could. "Because the world already knows I'm pregnant and getting rid of the baby isn't going to change that."

"You admitted the pregnancy is unstable. Your doctors can't even guaranty the baby is going to survive until birth." She shrugged. "Just think about it."

Toph did. It was tempting for sure. If she got rid of the baby sooner rather than waiting for it to happen on its own, she wouldn't have to endure many more horrible contractions like the one she'd had at the press conference. And what kind of a mother could she be? She'd never look her child in the eye, or be able to read it a bedtime story...

"If you and dad had known..." Toph asked, carefully. "If you'd known that I was going to be born blind. Would you have... gotten rid of _me_?"

"Toph..."

But Toph pulled back, placing her cup sharply on the table as she straightened up. "Forget it. That was a stupid question."

"Toph-"

"I have to get to work," Toph said hoarsely. She stood up and walked briskly towards the door. She felt her mother get up as well, but Toph had no intention of turning back.

Not this time.

* * *

"Here, Toph. Change his diaper for me."

Toph recoiled as she was handed a smelly, wailing infant. Tenzin was only a few weeks old and he already smelled like a sewer dwelling hobo. "Ya... I'll get right on that."

"I want to do it!" shouted Bumi, who was bouncing up and down next to her, but Katara placed a hand on his shoulder to settle the excited boy.

"Seriously?" Toph asked. "You _want_ to do this?" She was holding the baby at arm's length about a foot above the change table. Toph had never changed a diaper in her life and she wasn't quite sure where to start.

"Bumi, this is a learning experience for Toph. If you really want to change a diaper, you can give it a try later. How does that sound?"

Bumi rolled his head around making a thoughtful humming sound. "Mmmm... no," he said eventually, shrugging away from his mother and running down the hall. Katara sighed.

"I swear, I don't know what to do with that kid sometimes. He changes his mind every five seconds, can't stay focussed on a task..."

"He's particularly good at plotting mischief with his sister," Toph added as she placed Tenzin on the table. There were a few bottles lying around, though she wasn't quite sure what they were for. Some water, blankets, cloths...

"You can start by taking off his onesie," Katara said, noticing the way Toph's hands hovered tentatively above the squirming baby. Tenzin twisted his body violently as he cried, but he wasn't making any progress in his apparent attempts to escape.

"Right." Toph took hold of the soft fabric with her calloused hands. She delicately undid a few buttons before she heard Katara giggling. "What?" Toph asked, pausing in her task.

"Believe it or not, you're not likely to break my child while changing his diaper."

"He's a baby," Toph said, gesturing at the screaming kid in front of her. "Don't they just, like, die randomly sometimes?"

"Toph, relax. You can do this."

Toph took a deep breath while she flexed her hands. She got back to exposing the child's diaper and crinkled her nose in disgust at the smell. Katara had told her it wasn't going to smell bad at his age, but Toph begged to differ. "I guess there's a good reason you've never let me babysit before, huh?"

"Well, I've got plenty of people practically tripping over themselves to help out around here, it's not like it's ever been needed. Besides, you're always so busy with work..." Katara trailed off as she watched Toph undo Tenzin's diaper. "Make sure to have a cloth on hand to cover him up. Baby boys sometimes like to pee in your face, and if he turns out to be a waterbender, you're definitely not going to want that to happen."

Toph grabbed a cloth as she pulled open the soiled fabric. Katara began to direct her through the process of cleaning him off, but Toph soon found herself with a bit of a dilemma. She thought she'd wiped Tenzin's bum quite thoroughly, but Katara kept directing her to wipe in different areas. It seemed babies were capable of getting poop in places Toph would never have thought.

"Look, I'm sorry," Toph eventually snapped as Katara told her once again that she'd missed a spot. "The only ass I have any experience wiping is my own, and I'm typically pretty damn good at not shitting half-way down my thigh!"

"He didn't poop down his thigh, he got his leg in it while you were moving the diaper-"

"I can't see the poo, Katara! I don't know where I need to wipe!" The baby's screaming was grating on her ears and Toph dropped the cloth in frustration, turning from the table. Tenzin's poop was so soft that most of it blended in with its surroundings and Toph couldn't make it out with her earthbending. How was she supposed to wipe her own kid's ass if she needed someone to stand over her for the entire process?

"You'll get the hang of it," Katara said. "Just try again."

"No," Toph said as she stalked over to the sofa. "You finish. Clearly I'm not cut out for this."

Toph had never imagined poop to be such an important part of parenting. Apparently she needed to look out for texture, consistency, colour... how was she supposed to know if her baby's poop was the wrong colour? Would she be able to recognise diaper rash? Toph felt her breath hitch as she leaned her head back against the sofa.

"Here, wipe your hands off," Katara said as she sat down next to Toph and Toph was handed a wet cloth. Katara cuddled a newly changed Tenzin against her breast as the little boy began to settle down. "Are you okay?"

Toph sniffed as she wiped at her hands. She shrugged.

"How was the visit with your mom?"

Toph glared. "I think... my mom thinks I'm not capable of taking care of a child. And, I think she might be right." She felt Katara shift on the sofa next to her.

"Did she say that?"

"Well, no..." Toph admitted.

"Then don't put words in her mouth," the waterbender said. "It's natural for you to be scared, and I'm sure your mother knows this. I'm sure she's just worried for you."

Toph didn't know why she was so mad at her mom. Her mother was still in the city, but Toph had yet to go back to visit the house she was renting. "She told me I should get rid of the baby," Toph said quietly. She swallowed. "And I asked her if she would've done that to me if she knew I was going to be born blind."

Katara didn't say anything for a moment. Tenzin shifted in her arms, his heartbeat slowing as he drifted off to sleep. "What did she say?" Katara finally asked.

"I don't know, I left before she could answer!" Toph snapped. She rolled her shoulders and leaned back, her blind eyes staring at the ceiling. "Sorry, I just... I shouldn't have asked. That's really a dangerous thing to be thinking about, right?"

"Well, I mean..." Katara appeared unsure of what to say. She tilted her head slightly and Toph felt the back of the sofa move as the waterbender shrugged her shoulders. "It's not surprising that you're thinking about these things. Your mother carried you inside of her womb for nine months and now you're doing the same with your own child. I think you're looking for guidance and..." Toph's irritated sigh cut Katara off. Katara turned her head towards her and Toph narrowed her eyes. She was getting that judgey look again, wasn't she.

"Toph, your mother is probably the best resource you have for knowing what you're going to experience during pregnancy. I didn't have that luxury when I had my kids, and I'm not going to let you throw it away just because you're scared of what she might say."

Toph swallowed back a sob and she heard Katara gasp at the distraught expression that had suddenly appeared on the her face.

"Toph, what is it?" Katara asked. Toph took a shuddering breath.

"They didn't want me," Toph said. "I just... when I was born, and they saw my eyes..." She clenched her useless eyes shut, feeling the pressure from her eyelids push out a few tears. She took a deep breath to control herself.

"They were stuck with this... damaged... thing," Toph finished quietly. "And I fully believe that they would've gladly not had me had they known I was going to be that way."

"Even if that's true, they aren't the same people they were then." Katara placed a gentle hand on Toph's arm, but Toph didn't move. She didn't have the energy. "You need to talk to your mother, Toph. She loves you and she just wants what's best, even if her advice seems misguided."

Toph nodded mutely. She felt Katara smile.

"How about you come back next week and we'll try this again, hm?" When Toph didn't answer, Katara tried again. "Mood swings suck, don't they."

Toph rewarded her with a vaguely amused snort.

* * *

Moods swings weren't the only things that sucked though. Toph was learning the hard way that she was an unfortunate sufferer of frequent bouts of morning sickness. It was becoming more and more regular for Toph to be late for work because she didn't trust herself to leave the bathroom, and her officers were starting to get jumpy whenever she made even the slightest inclination that she wasn't feeling well. One young man had all but run from her when she'd burped while he'd been talking to her, and avatar protect the person that thought they could get away with bringing eggs to work with them. The smell was enough to send Toph sprinting towards the nearest bathroom while she inwardly cursed whatever brave soul had betrayed the new "egg free" rule that was in effect at police headquarters.

It had been about a month since Toph had visited her mother and the Police Chief still hadn't returned for a second visit. It didn't matter though, because it seemed Toph's mother intended to stay in Republic City for some time. Despite Katara's frequent attempts to sway her, Toph continued to delay any meeting the waterbender tried to set up.

Instead, Toph focussed on her newest task. Guo had found them a Braille instructor and Toph had begun the arduous task of learning an entirely new form of alphabet. She hated it.

"You sure it's not your baby, Heng?"

"You're kidding, right? The Chief and I aren't _that_ close."

"Come on, you can tell us!"

"Guys, I'm married. I have two kids of my own..."

"So?"

"So, the kid is Kanto's. Case closed."

Toph wondered how her officers could even pretend she couldn't hear them through her office door. She ran a finger over the line of bumps the instructor expected her to read.

"So?" the instructor asked. She leaned forwards against the desk, peering closely at Toph's bemused expression.

"The first one's a... C," Toph ventured. Guo was rustling through a bunch of papers, frantically searching for something. The instructor frowned. "No, wait. M. That's what it's called right? The one that goes mmmm."

"Very good."

Toph understood why Braille had to be so different from the traditional written word. There were so many characters, and to transcribe each one into a language that would be recognisable by touch... well an entirely new form of writing had needed to be invented. It involved a major reworking of how she perceived writing, not that she'd ever gotten much of a grasp of it in the first place. She just wished the learning process didn't make her feel like such a child.

"You guys know she was cheating on him, right?"

"She wasn't cheating," Heng responded defensively. "She flirted around a bit, but I mean, lots of guys throw themselves at her."

"Flirting around is cheating."

Guo glanced up from his papers to glare at the door, but he quickly turned his attention to the paper in front of Toph. "That says... Metalbending Police Force..." he said slowly.

"Um, ya. Of course. I could've figured that out eventually..."

"Yes, it does," said the instructor, her voice frail and quiet. "But let the Chief read it. The whole point of this is so that she can read without your help." Toph felt her fingers get brushed aside by one wrinkly hand as the instructor replaced the sheet of paper with another. "Let's try this one."

Toph ran her fingers across the first few letters, concentrating on deciphering the series of dots in front of her.

"Wasn't right, treating him like that."

"Well, what would you expect? They had nothing in common, besides being earthbenders. And he was terrible at that."

"So why were they even together?"

Toph growled, her eyes narrowing irritably. "Guo?" she said. "Do you mind politely telling our men outside to keep it down?"

"Of course, Chief," Guo said, rising from his chair. He walked briskly towards the door and cracked it open.

"Hey!" Toph felt the men outside the door turn their heads. There was a jump in their heartbeats, likely due to them realising how loudly they'd been talking. "The Chief wants me to tell you that she may be blind, but her ears work just fine, so-"

But Guo didn't get to finish his scolding because at that moment the main doors burst open, a dishevelled officer sprinting into the room. His heart was pounding as he tried to catch his breath. "Where's the Chief?" he gasped.

Toph was out of her seat before the man had finished speaking. She shoved roughly past Guo and as the officer caught sight of her he rushed over.

"Chief, the Dong Gang's leader's been found! He was apparently trying to intimidate a shop owner on Morning Street, and a fight broke out. Some of our officers got involved..." He took a deep breath. "It's still going on!"

Toph tensed up. "Okay, I'll head over there with-" But she stopped. She couldn't head over there herself. She'd promised her officers and the public that she wouldn't endanger the baby. "I need all available officers down there _now_! I'll be close behind."

She hated this. She hated limiting herself.

And she _hated_ feeling helpless.

* * *

"I'm going to interrogate him."

"Chief, are you sure that's a good idea?"

Toph snorted. "I'm interrogating the man, not challenging him to a duel." Ling pursed her lips but didn't pursue the subject.

Toph walked swiftly down the hall towards the interrogation room, Ling following closely at her heels.

"Good job on the takedown, by the way," Toph said. She felt Ling smile.

"Thanks, Chief."

Ling had indeed been the one to deliver the final blow that had allowed Toph's officers to capture the gang leader. Toph had been watching from a few streets over and couldn't help but smirk. She liked it when her female officers made her proud.

They were now heading through the holding cells, the interrogation room being just on the other side. A few of the cells were occupied by tenants supposedly guilty of various petty crimes. Some of them sneered at the Chief of Police as she strode past, while others huddled forlornly on the hard hunks of metal that served as their beds for the night. Toph and Ling stopped at the end of a row of cells where one of her officers was waiting to open the door for her.

"Chief," the man said with a curt nod of his head.

Toph nodded her own head in acknowledgement.

"Well, well, Chief..." said a gravelly voice to her left. "How about I roast up that little baby for you, hm?"

The voice belonged to a man who was locked up in the last cell of his row. He was sitting on the cell's bed, but appeared to be having trouble keeping himself upright. Toph continued to face forwards, refusing to reward the man by giving him any attention. She'd been on the receiving end of plenty of rude, lecherous, and downright inappropriate criminal behaviour while wandering past these cells and knew the best way to handle it was to pretend she hadn't heard anything.

"I see you've met our resident firebending drunk," the cell's guard said. Apparently this particular man hadn't been at his job long enough to get the memo about ignoring the inmates. Toph tried to remember his name, but was drawing a blank. "This guy thought his night out drinking would be best ended by turning the fountain outside the bar into a hot tub. Sent three half-naked women to the hospital with severe burns."

"Lovely," Toph deadpanned. She felt the man in the cell lick his lips as he looked her and Ling up and down. "Door?"

"Right, Chief. Of course." The officer quickly pulled open the panel that lead into the interrogation room. Toph and Ling stepped inside.

They weren't the only cops in there, of course. The man sitting at the interrogation table was far too dangerous to be left alone, and as such was surrounded by five mentalbenders. His hands were clamped to the table in front of him with steel wires. His expression was stony, but he looked up at the new arrivals as the door slid shut behind them.

"So you're Umi," Toph said coolly.

"Chief Beifong." She felt a slight grin mark his face. He had a strong, muscular body and a voice that sounded like melting ice. Toph strode over to the table, her hands clasped behind her back.

"You've been difficult to find," Toph said. The man shrugged.

"Tell me, Umi. What possessed a man in hiding to make a such a sudden display of hostility? Seems like a sloppy move, don't you think?"

"I have a temper." He grinned wider. "I'm sure you can relate."

"I take it you have no intention of telling me where exactly you've been hiding all this time?"

Umi shrugged. "I had a house. Guess I still do, technically."

"And that house is..."

"Why would I tell you where my house is? Now _that_ would be a sloppy move, am I right boys?" The man turned his head to grin at the officers standing guard, but they ignored him.

Toph shrugged. "Yes, I supposed that's a little personal. How about this? Does Republic City remind you at all of the Tuuq Camp where you grew up?"

She felt his heart beat pick up slightly, his muscles tensing. "I'm not sure how that's relevant..."

"Answer the question."

"Well, I mean, there are certainly a lot of differences. I'm not sure they're really comparable."

"Mmm." Toph flexed her toes a bit, feeling the smooth rock under her feet. "I think that's all for now. You can put him back in his cell."

Toph turned briskly and left the room, Ling scrambling to catch up as the two of them headed back down the row of cells.

"Chief, you barely asked him any questions!" Ling gasped, slightly out of breath.

"I didn't have to." They had made it out of the holding cells and were now in the main room of the building. "That man wasn't Umi."

She felt a hand grab her arm and she stopped in her tracks, turning to face Ling. "How do you know?" the young woman asked.

"The way he evaded questions that would identify him, for one. You'll note that in my presence he never outright claimed to be Umi." Toph took a deep breath. "He knows I can tell when someone is lying and he was sent as a stand in to make us think we've found the Dong Gang's leader. But that man knows nothing about where Umi grew up and he couldn't bluff his way through it."

"So what should we do?"

"Keep him." Toph shrugged. "Make them think it worked. Meanwhile, we keep looking. Discreetly."

* * *

She was standing outside the door again. The cold wind was stinging her face, but Toph didn't move. She could feel her mother standing inside the building, staring out the window. Watching her.

Toph clenched her fists. This is how it went last time, but Toph had turned away. She'd felt her mother shake her head as she left.

Toph couldn't bring herself to willingly put on a dress, but she had in fact put a little effort into her appearance. Her bangs were out of her face for one thing, and she was wearing her cleanest pair of pants. Not that her mother was likely to appreciate the effort.

She sighed, ready to turn around and head back to the small two bedroom she called her home. Why Toph had a second bedroom, she couldn't say, but she supposed it was a good thing in the end. A hand strayed to her belly, where just the barest evidence of her pregnancy was apparent. Katara was right. She needed to talk to her mother, even if she didn't want to.

She felt her mother stir slightly, but she didn't leave the window. Toph lifted a fist, ready to knock on the door. She would do it soon.

 _Any second now..._

But she dropped her hand, too stubborn, or too afraid, to make a move.

 _The brave Toph Beifong can't even face her own parents._

Suddenly, Toph gasped. She hunched over, hands grasping at her slightly swollen abdomen. She could feel the pressure and pain of another unexpected contraction.

"Toph!"

Toph hadn't even noticed that her mother had left the window, but now the older woman had her arms wrapped around her daughter's shoulders.

"It's fine, mom! I'm fine." The pain was starting to dissipate and Toph began to straighten up again. Her mother was glancing at her sidelong.

"You are _not_ fine. Come inside and sit down."

Toph felt herself being guided into the building, and while she wanted to protest, she didn't. This is why she came here, so she might as well follow through for once. Poppy was gesturing to a servant to bring Toph some water and Toph found herself being pushed backwards into a soft chair.

"Now who should I call?" her mother asked, hand hovering by the telephone. "Your waterbender friend? The hospital? Is there a doctor that's handling your pregnancy?"

"No one, mom. This is..." Toph shifted in her seat, alleviating some of the residual discomfort. "I've been getting these contractions, but Katara says the baby is fine. I shouldn't worry unless I have too many of them in a row."

Her mother lowered her hand, glancing at Toph's hunched posture. "How many are too many?" she asked.

Toph frowned. "One's too many as far as I'm concerned," she said under her breath.

Her mother walked over and sat down in a chair next to her. Toph felt the woman's gaze checking her over as a servant handed the earthbender a cup of water. The ornately carved designs of the cup felt smooth under Toph's fingers and reminded her of the life she had chosen the leave behind. Her mother was also very good at reminding her of just why she chose to do such a thing.

"You shouldn't hunch your shoulder so much," she said. The obedient high society girl inside of Toph sat up a little straighter before Toph could think about what she was doing. To compensate, Toph glared. "Toph, I know it was hard for you to come here. Please talk to me."

Toph took a shaky breath. She should have just turned around and left, but it seemed her stupid baby had other plans.

 _Pushy little asshole._

"Do you want the servants to get you anything else?" Poppy said. "You haven't touched your water."

"No. I'm fine. I didn't even need the water." To prove her point, Toph placed the cup on the table that was sitting in between their two chairs.

"I'm sorry if I said anything that may have hurt you," Poppy continued. "The question you asked the last time you were here..."

"Don't worry about that," Toph said. "I was just being hormonal."

She felt her mother shake her head, a few strands of hair falling around her shoulders. Was Toph imagining that? Was her mother's hair down?

"You had every right to ask that question and I don't blame you for wanting to know. But please understand, your father and I were very different back then. Having you, getting to know you... it's changed us for the better. We love you very much, Toph."

"I know." Toph felt tears beginning to form in her eyes. She really hated all this emotional garbage.

The two of them didn't say anything for some time. A servant came and brought her mother a cup of tea, but Toph turned her down when she was offered one as well. Toph closed her eyes, breathing deeply and inhaling the floral aroma that wafted over from her mother's tea cup. The breath helped to quell the choking sensation that had been building in her throat and Toph began to feel less like she was suffocating.

"Should I get rid of it?" Toph asked, eyes still closed.

"I think you should do what's best for you," her mother answered.

"I could tell the public that it happened naturally. That there was too much damage from the beating the Dong Gang gave me."

"You could."

"It would make things so easy," Toph whispered.

Her mother turned her upper body towards Toph as she examined the younger woman. Poppy's heartbeat sped up slightly. Toph opened her eyes, brow furrowed.

"Toph, I want you to know that your father and I think you've grown up to be an incredible woman. You're strong, both physically and mentally, and you handle so many situations that would traumatise most people. You persevere." Her mother leaned forwards and rested a hand on Toph's leg. "But after a lot of thought, and after the way you reacted when you visited last... I honestly don't think you would be able to forgive yourself if you decided willingly to not have this baby."

And that was it. Toph knew her mother was absolutely right.

"It's a girl," Toph said quietly. "I can feel it with my earthbending."

She felt her mother inhale sharply as she sat up straight once again. "How long have you known?"

"A couple of weeks now. Sometimes, when it's quiet, I just stand there and I can feel her."

"Your daughter is going to need a father, Toph."

Her daughter. That was an idea that Toph still hadn't gotten used to, but hearing it out loud...

 _Now if I only knew where the father was..._

"You know, I haven't had a bowel movement in days," Toph said.

"There are medications to help with that," her mother replied, pinching the bridge of her nose.


	4. Kanto's Hiding

_"Toph, can I have a word?"_

 _Kanto took her by the arm and gently led her away from the man she had been talking to. The other patrons of the bar were chatting loudly, while the quietest of the bunch appeared to be engaged in intense tongue wrestling matches in the bar's more secluded booths. Kanto had had a few drinks by this point and seemed to be working on yet another, so Toph figured this was not likely to be one of their usual bar scene make out sessions._

 _"What's wrong?" Toph asked with a flirty grin. She put her own drink down on the counter and placed one hand flat on his chiselled chest._

 _"It's just, I don't think I like the way you were talking to that guy..."_

 _"We were just talking," Toph responded. Her grin faded and she let her expression harden. "I'm allowed to talk to other guys you know."_

 _"You were flirting."_

 _Toph applied pressure to the hand she had on his chest and felt him stumble back slightly. His stance was unstable._

Which is what makes him such a terrible earthbender, _she thought bitterly._

 _"I was_ not _flirting!"_

 _"Then what would you call that?" Kanto asked, gesturing towards the man she had previously been chatting up. He was apparently in the process of buying another woman a drink._

 _"Talking! We were talking. He wanted to hear stories about the war!"_

 _"You_ hate _telling stories about the war!"_

 _"Well sure, but I love talking about how awesome I am! You know that." Toph grimaced when she noticed a few nearby people turning their heads to look at them. The immediate vicinity had grown slightly more quiet. "Can we talk about this somewhere a little more private?"_

 _"Fine."_

 _"I'll just let Ling and Heng know we're heading out..."_

 _In the house, Kanto turned and opened his mouth to speak, but Toph grabbed his shirt and pulled him close. "Talk later," she said, before pulling him into a passionate kiss. Kanto didn't argue as he began to peel the shirt off of her shoulders. Toph could feel his erection pressing against her through his pants._

 _"We make a terrible couple," Kanto said. He was lying on the bed next to her, the both of them completely out of breath. Toph laughed heartily._

 _"Duh! But what we just did there? That's what makes us so great! I swear our bodies were made for each other."_

 _"I want more than just sex, Toph."_

 _Toph felt him roll over and sit up as she lay on her back, still catching her breath. Suddenly the sticky feeling on her bare skin felt wrong on so many levels."What are you saying?" she asked._

 _"I want a girlfriend who respects me, who doesn't cheat on me-"_

 _"I never-"_

 _"I want a wife."_

 _Toph blinked, but otherwise didn't move. "Oh."_

 _"Goodbye, Toph." Toph heard him stumble out the bedroom door._

Toph groggily came to her senses. She was lying on something soft, her back pressed against something similarly soft. A sofa? Where was she again?

The air smelled strongly of fish and there was a patter of small feet accompanied by the nearby squeal of a happy child being chased by an older sibling. Right. She had taken a nap at air temple island after a healing session with Katara.

And of course she had to go ahead and have a dream about sex, _without_ the actual sex. Toph's subconscious really needed to get its priorities straight.

"Gotcha!" she heard Bumi yell from right behind her.

"No!" was Kya's reply. There was a scuffle and a thump, and then the small feet were fleeing into another room.

"Hey!" Bumi shouted, as he disappeared as well.

"Toph, I'm so sorry! I told them not to come in here."

"It's okay," Toph said with a yawn. She sat up slowly and planted her feet firmly on the ground. Katara was standing in the hallway that led to the kitchen. It must have been almost time for dinner.

"How are you feeling?" Katara asked.

"Tired. Hungry." Toph stretched as she leaned back.

"That's good. The food should be ready soon." Katara always insisted on Toph staying for dinner after her healing sessions. Toph was going to have to stay there for a bit anyway to make sure she wasn't going to have any issues, so a routine was beginning to form where Toph would take a nap after their session and then they would all eat together. It was nice, and it gave Toph an opportunity to get some practise parenting in with Tenzin.

"Hey, you don't think Kanto would..." Toph trailed off. Katara had been about to leave the room, but she turned around, her heartbeat picking up in worry.

"Toph, we talked about this. You and Kanto-"

"I know. I don't want to get back together with him. I just think, if he were to come back to Republic City, he could be involved. You know?"

"You told me you don't know where he is."

"I could find him."

Katara leaned against the doorframe as she crossed her arms. "What brought this on?" she asked.

"My kid has no father," Toph said. She ran a hand over her hair, attempting to flatten out the bed head from her bun. "And I guess it would be nice to not have to do this on my own. But he might not believe..." Toph trailed off.

"What might he not believe? That the child is his?"

Toph shrugged. She heard Katara take a deep breath.

"Toph, why wouldn't he believe the child is his?" There was warning in Katara's tone.

Toph was silent as she contemplated how to phrase what she had to say. "I may have... cheated on him," she said eventually. "I think he knew. That's why he left."

"Toph!"

"I slept with Guo."

"Oh spirits..." Katara rubbed at her face with the palm of her hand. "Why would you-"

"Kanto and I didn't exactly have the perfect relationship, okay? The sex was good, but we didn't really connect in any other way. Guo understands me better. I gave it a shot, it was an awful experience..." Katara was glaring at her, but Toph didn't care. "It was over a year ago. I felt really guilty about it and it never happened again."

"Did you tell Kanto?" She could hear the anger in Katara's voice.

"No. But I think he figured it out on his own. We never really talked about it."

Katara sighed. "You're an amazing person, but sometimes... you're just really, _really_ awful. You know that, right?"

"I know. I already told you how guilty I felt, right?"

"How could you do something like that? Why didn't you just break up with him?" Katara was gesturing wildly with her hands, a sure sign that Toph had pushed her over the edge. She should've kept her mouth shut. Screw confessions.

"The sex wasn't just good," Toph said. "It was fantastic! I didn't want to give that up and I'm never going to find that with anyone else."

"Okay, you know what? You do what you have to do." Katara shook her head. "If Kanto wants to talk to you that's great for you, but it sounds to me like you don't deserve it!"

"I felt really guilty-"

"Feeling guilty isn't good enough, Toph! What you did was really bad, and now there's the possibility that somebody else has to pay for your actions!" Toph's hand strayed to her belly.

"Dinner's going to be ready real soon," Katara spat, turning away from the conversation at hand. "You might want to start making your way to the kitchen."

* * *

Toph was getting the silent treatment from her friend. They still had their weekly healing sessions, but the caring "Tenzin baby practice" interactions were all but gone. Toph was still welcome at dinner, but Katara barely talked to her. Aang still chatted away, though Toph could tell he was disappointed as well.

She tried burying herself in her work to ignore the guilt. She could now read and press her own name fairly quickly in Braille, though Guo had picked everything up a lot faster and appeared to be leagues ahead of her. He had taken up transcribing some of her police reports for practice, though it took Toph so long to read anything it was hardly worth the effort.

It was a couple of months before Toph was able to actually muster up enough courage to act on her previous desire. She was quite clearly pregnant now, and had had to alter her armour to compensate since there was no way Toph Beifong was going to work without her full uniform. She wasn't in uniform at the moment though, having donned a long flowing top and a pair of stretchy pants that her mother had helped her pick out when they'd gone shopping together. She probably looked horrendously girly, but it wasn't like Toph's normal wardrobe included mid to late stage pregnancy sizes.

She trudged up a flight of steps in the musty stairway of an apartment complex. She knew this area of town was notorious for drug dealing and the Chief of Police probably wasn't an overly welcome sight, but there was someone here she needed to talk to. She rapped smartly on a door and felt the apartment's resident rise from where he'd been lounging on the sofa. He opened the door and then tried to shut it quickly when he saw who was on the other side.

"Shit!" he hissed, noticing that Toph had bent a doorstop to prevent him from shutting her out.

"I need to talk to you," Toph stated calmly.

"I didn't do anything!" he insisted.

Toph paused, raising an eyebrow at his quickened heartbeat. "Well that's a lie," she stated. "But I just came here to talk to you about your brother." She could smell a hint of smoke inside his apartment. The man had been lighting something on fire... "You're high."

"Am not!"

"Lying again! That really is a piss-poor use for firebending, don't you think?" Toph stated cheerily.

"Please don't arrest me again!" His breathing was dangerously rapid and Toph could feel the panicked pounding of his heart.

"Calm down, I'm not going to arrest you. Besides, I make a terrible eye witness." He didn't respond, instead he glanced nervously at the table behind him. "Get it? Cause I'm blind?"

"Look, Kanto doesn't want to see you anymore, okay? And frankly, neither do I." He tried to pull the door closed again, apparently having forgotten that Toph had it blocked. "You can't come in! You don't have a warrant!"

"I don't want to come in. Just tell me where Kanto is."

"No."

"He has a responsibility to his child," Toph said, her voice hardening. The man seemed to notice her protruding belly for the first time and it gave him pause.

"Kanto says it's not his." He tried to pull the door closed again and then glared at the hunk of stone keeping it open.

"So you've been talking to him. Is he in town? Do you have his phone number?"

"No! Yes... please, just leave." Somebody down the hall opened their door a crack and then snapped it shut rapidly. Her presence wasn't going to go unnoticed for much longer.

"It _is_ Kanto's kid and I want to know where he is."

"He won't believe you. And I'm not going to tell you anything so you might as well go, before someone around here is stupid enough to try anything." Toph opened her mouth to retort, but the man beat her to it. "You know someone will."

Toph snorted in irritation. "Fine," she said, stomping her foot on the ground. The doorstop she'd made sunk back into the floor and the man quickly shut the door before Toph could change her mind.

"He had to get a date with the Chief of Police when he paid my bail..." she heard the man mumble on the other side of the door as he walked away.

* * *

"Oh, this one's good," Sokka said. He was holding a newspaper and staring at something on it with a stupid grin on his face. There was a small stack of newspapers in front of him that he had saved up for their special dinner. "You look like you ate something really sour. Great expression. You should definitely try that one again."

"Would that I could," Toph mumbled as she snapped up some noodles with her chopsticks.

"Hey, it's not as bad as the press conference you called to announce your pregnancy," he stated. "But it's still pretty bad."

"I was in a lot of pain that time!"

"Ya ya," he said, dropping the paper next to his empty bowl. Toph listened to the rustling of paper as he lifted up another one and flipped through the pages until he had found yet another picture of her. "Wow, the press sure does love taking awful pictures of you lately." He was quiet for a moment, which made the sound of Toph slurping at her broth all the more audible. She felt him tilt his head. "Oh ya, this one's going on the wall."

"That bad?" she asked, mouth full. If her mother were present, Toph would be getting a very stern scolding about now.

"You don't even want to know."

Toph finished off her third bowl of noodles and pushed it aside, resting her chin in her hands. Sokka was in the process of cutting out squares from the newspapers he was scouring. He had turned a portion of her kitchen wall into a collage of terrible pictures of her. It was a harmless little bit of fun since Toph didn't have to look at them, and people who visited seemed to find it amusing. Plus, Toph knew only people with the biggest egos had that many pictures of themselves in their homes, and Toph needed some way to show off just how enormous her own ego really was.

"Somebody sent me a crib today," she said.

"Oh ya?" Sokka asked, only partially paying attention. He bit his lip in concentration as he cut an intricate shape from the paper. It was the shape of Toph's body, with her hands seemingly on her hips. "That was nice of them."

"I sent it back. Who knows who sent it."

"What, you think someone's going to send booby trapped baby gifts?" Sokka asked. He looked up briefly from his work and quirked an eyebrow.

"I'm the Chief of Police," Toph said. "I have enemies. I swear I'm going to birth a baby with a giant target on her head!"

Sokka placed his scissors on the table and fixed Toph with a stare. "Promise me you won't become an overprotective mother," he said.

"Oh please, like I'm going to be that kind of mom." Sokka stared at her quietly but Toph pointed one grimy finger at his nose. "Look, I'm going to be as protective as I need to be and no more. I'm not going to coddle my child like my parents coddled me."

"And who's going to protect the baby while you're at work?"

"I don't know, a nanny?" Toph dropped her head into her hands.

"You need to think about these things."

"I know!" Toph said, her voice muffled. "I just..."

What did Sokka expect from her? She was one person being thrust into something she never wanted anything to do with in the first place. Toph still had massive doubts about her ability to even _be_ a mom, especially since the majority of her parenting decisions so far revolved around things she intended _not_ to do as a parent. And she couldn't even find the baby's father.

Toph's silence was apparently telling, because she soon found Sokka's hand on her arm.

"Katara told me you were trying to find Kanto..."

Toph sniffed. She hadn't noticed how runny her nose had gotten over the past few seconds. "What else did she tell you?" she asked.

"Um..." Toph wiped at her eyes as Sokka floundered, because her eyes were also showing signs of her turning into a weepy mess. "She mentioned the whole cheating thing." Toph flinched. "But I'm not going to judge you for that! Okay? You're getting enough of that from my sister."

"So what are you going to judge me for?"

"Nothing! Toph, I'm here to help you!" The hand on her arm tightened its grip. "If there's anything I can do to help you find him..."

Toph pulled her arm away from him. She leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest. "I'm not going to be able to find him," she said.

"Giving up? That's not the Toph I know."

"Kanto's out of the picture, okay?" Toph snapped. "Finish up your stupid collage. I'm going outside for some fresh air." She stood up and stalked out the door into her backyard.

* * *

Toph really liked her yard. Her parents had tried to hire a landscaper for her, but Toph had shut that idea down immediately. Her yard was rough around the edges, just like her. It was also rough around the middle, and rough for quite a distance downwards too. After all, this was where she came to practice her earthbending.

Which is why Toph's house was so small while the space around it was so big. It was a bit of an anomaly in the middle of a city, sure, but there were perks to being one of the city's founders.

Sokka had left a few hours ago. She'd stayed outside, stomping pillars into and out of existence while Sokka shuffled around her kitchen. It felt vaguely like he was cleaning up after her, but Toph had put extra effort into not paying too much attention to what he was doing. She just wanted to be alone.

Now that she _was_ alone, she wasn't eathbending anymore. She stood quietly at the entrance to her house, feeling the destruction she had left behind. She took in the new configuration of crevices and boulders that made up her own personal brand of landscaping, just like she did after every session. Somehow, her newest construct seemed angry. Confused.

A squirrel frog leapt across her path, bounding into a hole she'd made and emitting a hollow croak. A flock of birds chirped amidst the rustling of leaves from a tree in her neighbour's yard, and she heard a dog bark from across the street. She could feel the dirt on her skin, and the dirt on her face. She could feel where her tears had cleaned it away, down her cheeks and all the way to her chin.

She could feel the baby move inside of her.

She'd wanted to be alone when Sokka was here, but now that she was alone she wished she wasn't. It was just her and this thing squirming inside of her. This thing that depended on her, and she was already failing it. She couldn't find Kanto. This child depended on her, and only her.

Alone.

She felt another contraction, but barely reacted this time. Her muscles tensed and her face hardened. Another round of tears ran down her face, joining their brothers in the wet dirt at her feet. That was the third one so far...

Motherhood wasn't right for her. Toph had known this since she was a teenager, since long before she'd reconnected with her parents and they'd started trying to set her up with an arranged marriage. She'd never wanted a husband and she'd never wanted a family.

She'd never wanted to disappoint a child like her parents had disappointed her.

Another contraction hit, closer than the last one. Toph still didn't move, though her breath caught in her throat. She could feel something sticky between her legs but, maybe... it was for the best.

She couldn't even find the child's father. Kanto would know how to be a parent. He'd wanted kids, a family... Toph could only screw things up, heck, she'd already got a pretty good start on that one.

The pressure in her abdomen was worse, and the baby had stopped moving. She could still feel her heartbeat though. She was still alive in there.

What if her baby was blind, like her? That wouldn't be so bad. Toph was thriving, after all. But what if the baby couldn't earthbend? What if her child was properly helpless? Toph didn't know how to handle the non-earthbending blind. The proper blind. She didn't want to have to raise a child who couldn't see with her eyes _or_ her feet.

Then again, her parents hadn't wanted to raise a child who couldn't see...

The next contraction was bad enough that it forced Toph to hunch over with a pained cry. She grasped at her abdomen, gasping for breath as though she had just resurfaced from a body of water. The wetness between her legs was alarming, as was the pain.

She turned around, stumbling into her house. Making her way towards the telephone in her living room. It was difficult, but Toph could handle difficult.

She always had.

"Katara," she gasped into the receiver once her fingers had found the right numbers. "Katara, help me..."

Katara's alarmed voice on the other end of the phone was somehow comforting to Toph. The way she took charge, the rapid questions being thrown Toph's way... something told her she would be just fine.

Toph could handle this.


	5. A Moderately Average Conclusion

_"Why would you wait so long?"_

 _"Are you okay?"_

 _"The baby's fine but..."_

 _"I'm so sorry, I shouldn't have judged you..."_

 _"You're not alone for this. We're here to help."_

It was nice to have so many of her friends over at her house. Today was baby room assembly day, where Toph's guest bedroom received its newest makeover. Most of her baby shopping was done, and Sokka and Aang had brought an unusual number of paint buckets with them.

"How about this one?" Aang was asking.

"No, no," Sokka responded. "That's too girly. Too pink..."

"Toph wouldn't have known if you hadn't said anything," came the Avatar's dejected response.

"You're not painting my daughter's room pink!" Toph yelled from the living room.

The boys began to argue in the other room and then Toph heard a wet smack, followed by childish, maniacal laughter. Bumi came running out of the room with his hands dripping and a wide grin on his face, followed closely by his seething uncle.

Toph was sitting down on the sofa, her large belly having gotten to the annoying point where she was getting uncomfortable standing for any amount of time. It was particularly annoying to her poor feet, which were swollen and achy and distracted Toph from any serious attempts at trying to see anything. Though she _could_ make out something dripping from a squirming Bumi's hands as he struggled in his uncle's grip.

"Is he getting pink paint on my floor?" Toph asked, pointing at the ground beneath her friend's feet.

"No, no, no..." Sokka said, finally wrestling the boy into a relatively still position. "It's red. And Bumi and I are going to make sure it's cleaned up before we leave. Right Bumi?"

"Fiiiiinne..." Bumi said exasperatedly. Sokka lowered him to the ground as Toph shifted her focus elsewhere.

Inside the baby's room, Aang was crouched on the ground. He was examining the various buckets of paint with incredible concentration as a small figure tiptoed up behind him. It dipped a paintbrush in one of the buckets and began brushing it over the Avatar's bald head.

"Huh, wha? Kya!" Toph heard Aang shout.

"Like your arrow pink!" she squealed and Toph couldn't help but laugh as Katara peered her head out the kitchen door.

"I swear, I can't leave him with the kids for five seconds..." she said, starting towards the room where Aang was now confiscating his daughter's paint brush.

"Katara, calm down. Let Twinkletoes handle this one." The last of their three kids was cuddled up on Toph's lap. Tenzin was drooling on the earthbender's shirt, his face pressed into her swollen belly. Sokka had dragged Bumi outside to wash his hands off in a large bucket of water they'd prepared for just this occasion.

Outside was also where Heng and Ling were, as they put their bending to use constructing a large metal crib. Toph could feel Ling swing a rod of metal which hit Heng's foot. The man cursed verbosely. Hearing the curse, Katara pinched the bridge of her nose.

"Toph, could you get your police friends to watch their language around the kids?"

"They're police officers. They're going to curse, get over it." She could hear Katara's frustrated breathing so Toph put on her most placating smile. She patted the sofa beside her. "Sit down, Katara. Relax. Take your baby from me so I can go to the bathroom again."

"Fine," she heard Katara grumble. Tenzin's weight was lifted from Toph's aching bladder and the earthbender sighed in relief.

When Toph returned from the bathroom, Tenzin was awake and Katara was trying to juggle both him and a curious older sister.

"What did I say about letting Twinkletoes handle it?" Toph asked.

"He had to go help Sokka with Bumi. Kya, no. He doesn't like that." Kya was in the process of trying to pull out individual strands of Tenzin's hair and Tenzin was being oddly compliant.

"He has a big head, Mommy," Kya said as Toph eased herself onto the Sofa next to them. Kya's hand was being batted away once more so Toph reached her arms out.

"Hand him over," she said and the baby was quickly passed over his older sister's head.

"No fair!" Kya shouted, trying to climb up her mother's front, but Katara picked her up and put her on the ground.

"Why don't you go play with your dolls?" Katara asked.

"Dolls are boring!"

"Damn straight," was Toph's response, but she quickly closed her mouth when Katara shot her an angry glare.

Eventually Kya wandered off to play with some of the toys Katara and Aang had brought along to populate Toph's new nursery. The two women were left alone with a bouncy Tenzin, who was apparently very interested in Toph's bangs.

"So when did you say your mother was going to show up?" Katara asked. Tenzin was standing unsteadily on Toph's thighs and he had a hunk of her hair in a tight fist.

"Um, closer to when dinner is ready I think. You know she'd never hang around for all the do it yourself crap... is he eating my hair?"

"Tenzin, no. That doesn't go in your mouth." Katara was pulling a few slobbery strands of Toph's hair out of her son's grip, but the baby was relentless. "I hope she doesn't mind water tribe food."

"Who knows," Toph responded. The two of them didn't say anything for a moment. In that time, Tenzin managed to get his thumb in Toph's eye.

"How are you holding up, anyway?" Katara asked once Toph had blinked some of the stinging away.

"Okay, I guess. I still don't know if I'm ready for this."

"Nobody's ready for being a parent, even when they think they are. You'll get there." Katara's swift hand saved Toph from being poked in the eye again. Toph decided it was probably best to just keep her eyes closed what with them being in such close proximity to flailing baby fists.

"That's what everyone keeps saying. I'll figure it out. I'll understand what's so great about it when I actually have the kid in my arms, etcetera. But I'm having a hard time imagining it. Katara, no matter how much I imagine loving my baby, all I can think about is how she's currently got her elbow jammed into my bladder... Here, hold him, I'll be right back."

When Toph returned from the bathroom once again, Katara plopped Tenzin onto her lap. The baby immediately started trying to climb the front of her shirt.

"Going for the bangs again, huh?" Outside there was a loud splash of water followed by excited laughter.

"Dad, do it again!"

"Really putting those avatar skills to good use there, aren't you," came Sokka's sarcastic response.

"You know, I don't hate the idea of being a parent," Toph said. "But... I'm not really looking forward to it either."

"I don't know what to tell you," Katara replied.

"Tell me what's so great about it."

Just then Tenzin sneezed. What Toph expected was to have a face full of baby spit. What she didn't expect was for her head to be blown forcefully into the wall. Tenzin fell backwards out of her stunned grip, but Katara managed to catch him before he fell to the floor.

"What just happened?" Toph asked. The back of her head throbbed.

"Aang!" Shouted an excited Katara. "Tenzin's an airbender!"

Toph didn't need to feel his ecstatic heartbeat to know that this was the happiest moment of Aang's life.

* * *

"Don't wander too far," Toph said to her assistant as he headed towards the door. "I'm only going to do a few of these on my own. I'm still a little slow at this."

She felt him laugh. "Ya, _a little_."

"Watch it, Guo," Toph said, pointing a finger at him. "I may be _very_ pregnant, but I can still kick your ass."

"I'm aware," he said. The door clicked shut behind him.

Toph focussed her attention on the first of the papers in front of her. They'd finally got the real Umi in custody after some clever detective work and Toph wanted the satisfaction of reading and signing the paperwork herself. She ran a finger along a set of bumps at the top of the page.

 _Republic City Metalbending Police Force_

Alright. So far so good. That didn't take too long.

 _Herein are written the events which took place on..._

Shit, she'd forgotten numbers. Which one was that... Four? No, five? Should she call Guo in to help? No, Toph could figure this out. She just needed to remember when they'd...

"Ung!" She grunted, hunching over into a cramping that had overtaken her abdomen. Another useless contraction? Or was the baby actually coming? She waited for it to pass, and then sat up straight. She was trying to decide if she should just sit and wait for another one or if she should keep reading her report, when a second contraction hit not too long after the first. "Oh, that's the real thing," she grumbled as it died away.

Toph stood slowly, one hand on her large belly, and shuffled over to the door. "Guo, a word?"

Guo wandered over from his own desk, but he caught sight of Toph tensing up as another contraction hit and realization seemed to set in. "Is it-" Toph nodded. She was pretty sure the contractions weren't supposed to be this close together.

Guo squeezed into her office as Toph breathed her way through her third contraction.

"I'll need you to finish up some of the paperwork for me while I... Guo, what is it?" Guo had frozen in place. He was staring at her chair.

He glanced up, and his head tilted down slightly. What was he looking at?

"You're bleeding," he said.

 _Fuck._

* * *

"I was going to give birth standing up!" Toph whined. She didn't want to put on the whiny tone, what with her officers just outside the door, but this was a big deal to her. "You said I could have my feet on the ground when I spit this thing out."

Currently Toph was sitting in the chair at her desk. Once Guo had realised what was happening with the baby, he'd made an emergency phone call to Katara who'd told Toph to stay put.

"That's not happening now since you're not stable enough to be standing up," said Katara. She'd just finished examining Toph with her healing water and the news wasn't good. Toph couldn't be moved and she was going to have to give birth at the office. "Now I'm going to help you over to the sofa and you're going to _lie down_."

Toph groaned in frustration which turned into a groan of pain as another contraction hit. "UGH, I'm going to _kill someone_ ," Toph growled, teeth clenched tightly.

"That's how a lot of women feel when they go into labour," Katara said calmly. She held Toph by the arm as the earthbender exhaled tensely through her nose. "Though with you, I'm worried it might actually be true. Just try to breathe through it."

Toph's feet may have been swollen and her eathbending relatively inaccurate as a result, but Katara was close enough that Toph could make out the panic in her heartbeat. This was _bad_ , and Toph was trying very hard not to think about just how bad it really was.

Eventually Katara got Toph settled on the sofa, where she'd set down a very large number of towels in an attempt to prevent staining, not that Toph cared all that much about stains. Just as her feet left the ground she heard a thump from outside her office, a light scuffling of feet, and then the door was flung open.

"I'm sorry, sweetie. I dropped one of the bags when I ran into the desk outside, and I'm holding Tenzin so-"

"Are you panicking, Twinkletoes?"

"Aang, calm down. Give me that bag and go grab the other one."

Toph listened to Katara rifle through the sack her husband had given her while Aang headed back towards the door. On the other side she heard the sounds of small feet running and a stack of papers being knocked over.

"Hey, you're an assistant," said Sokka's voice. "Watch these kids for me."

"That's not my job-"

"Watch the kids, Guo!" Toph shouted. She was hit by another contraction and her shout turned into a shout of pain. "ARGH! For the love of-"

"Yes Chief! Sorry!"

"Toph? You're losing a lot of blood and I'm going to try and slow the bleeding okay?"

"Justdowhatyouhavetodo!" Toph said through clenched teeth. She heard the door click shut and Sokka's unmistakable footsteps rushed to her side. A hand was placed inside of hers, and another hand was placed on her shoulder. Toph immediately squeezed the hand and was rewarded by Sokka yelping loudly. She grinned a maniacal, sweaty grin.

"This is going to be cold," Katara said.

Toph began to relax as the contraction subsided and she felt cold water make its way around her belly. She leaned back against the pillows and relaxed her grip on Sokka's hand.

Katara had gone quiet, presumably because she was concentrating very hard on what she was doing. Toph listened to the gentle hum of the healing water, and the incredibly soft footsteps that returned from the office door.

"Okay, here's the other bag," Aang said. There was a soft thump behind Toph's head. "Toph, this is all your stuff from home. Change of clothes, diapers, that kind of thing."

"Thanks," Toph said. She felt oddly... okay. Maybe she should have been excited, or terrified, but she was just glad to be doted on by the people she cared about. Besides whatever Katara was doing had slowed her contractions down significantly and Toph was just relieved that she could relax, even if it was only briefly. "Any word on my mother?"

"She's on her way, don't worry," said Sokka. He gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. "She said she had no intention of missing the birth of her first grandchild."

"First?! How many of these things does she think I'm going to have?!"

There was a swish of water and the cold sensation left Toph's belly. "Toph, I'm really sorry, but I wasn't able to stop the bleeding nearly as much as I would have liked. Not while you're still having contractions." Katara took a shaky breath, which worried Toph immensely. "How do you feel about a transfusion?"

Toph swallowed back the lump in her throat. "Do I have much of a choice?" she asked quietly.

"Not really."

* * *

Toph screamed.

It was probably a good thing she wasn't giving birth standing up, because she was pretty sure headquarters would be experiencing an impressive earthquake right about now had she had her feet on the ground.

"Chief Beifong, I need you to keep your arm relaxed or the transfusion may stop working."

"I DON'T CARE RIGHT NOW!" Toph shouted. The poor nurse probably didn't deserve it, but Toph was in far too much pain to care. She felt her mother's hand shift on her shoulder as Toph pushed.

To say Poppy Beifong had been surprised at Katara's request for a direct blood transfusion would be an understatement. It was a risky procedure for both her and Toph, but it seemed the woman was willing to go to great lengths for her daughter, at least once the seriousness of the situation had been explained. Toph took comfort in her mother's presence for once, especially since her back was propped up against the older woman's torso and her mother's blood was literally flowing into Toph's veins.

Toph couldn't fathom how Katara had managed to go through this _three times._ The Chief of Police was no stranger to pain, but this? This was something else entirely.

"I've got her!" Katara announced when Toph's pained cry had died down. The earthbender listened for her daughter, eventually hearing a small wail that seemed much quieter than she'd expected. Was she alright? Was she unusually weak for a newborn?

"Toph, I need you to focus." Katara was back between Toph's legs and the baby was crying somewhere to her left. "You're still bleeding a lot and I need you to push the placenta out before I can try healing you again, alright?"

"Is she okay?" Toph asked, panting.

"She's fine, now push!"

Toph wanted to weep. She wanted to hold her crying child, but instead she followed Katara's orders.

Soon enough Katara was quietly focused on her healing magic, and Toph was trying to catch her breath. She could hear the baby breathing rapidly, but much too far away for Toph's liking. She wasn't crying anymore either. Toph didn't know if that was a good or bad sign.

"Who's holding her?" Toph asked.

"Your warrior friend," she heard her mother say, right by her ear. Toph jumped, having completely forgotten how close she was.

"Sokka, she's okay, right?" Toph knew she was going to cry soon and she hated everything about it.

"She's amazing, Toph. Your daughter's amazing."

"Wow, look at her," she heard Aang say.

"I physically _cannot_ look at her, so GIVE ME MY DAMN BABY!" The tears were falling down Toph's cheeks and she was gasping for breath. She felt her mother pull her tightly against her chest and something pressed into her hair.

"Toph, please calm down," her mother said. Her voice was muffled by Toph's hair. "You need to wait until they take the needle out of your arm. You won't be able to hold a child like this."

Right, she and her mother were still attached for the transfusion. Toph swallowed thickly and tried to calm her breathing.

"Okay, I think I've stopped the bleeding. But, Toph, you're not really strong enough to be holding her right now-"

"Katara, if you tell me I'm not allowed to hold my own baby right now, I swear-"

"Toph!" Crap, that was Poppy's scolding tone. Toph glared ferociously, but she shut up as her mother shifted behind her. "Once these needles are taken out, I'll help you hold the child."

Toph nodded mutely and waited as the nurse slipped the needle out of her arm. In all honesty, Katara was probably right. Toph felt incredibly light-headed and almost fell over when her mother twisted her body to accept the baby in her arms. She heard a gasp.

"She's looking right at me..." Poppy said quietly. Toph felt own her heart skip a beat.

Her baby could see.

Poppy didn't move. Some jealous part of Toph reminded her that this was probably how her mother had wanted her own birthing process to end. To look her daughter in the eye and see her looking back...

"Mom, please..."

"Yes of course. Here, Toph, hold out your arms."

With her mother supporting her from behind, a weak, light-headed Toph was finally able to feel her baby's features properly for the first time. The baby didn't seem to like Toph's fingers all over her face and she let out a single disgruntled wail before settling down again. Toph couldn't help the massive grin that had taken over her face.

Her daughter was perfect.

Her skin was so soft, her face adorably pudgy. Her head was practically bald, but that would certainly change over time.

"Welcome to the world, kiddo," Toph said weakly. "The first thing you should know is that airbending is the work of evil spirits. And since you can apparently see, I need you to take note of the baby being held by the bald guy. Watch out for that one."

"Hey!" Aang said indignantly. "Don't listen to her, Tenzin. Airbending is the best thing to happen to you."

"Toph, we need to get you to the hospital," Katara said.

Toph was very adamant that she would _not_ be pushed out of her office on a gurney and she was going to be holding her own baby, spirits be damned! There was a lot of arguing between her and Katara, but eventually Toph was settled into a wheelchair with her arm propped securely on a pillow and her baby settled carefully in her arms. Toph was concentrating extra hard on not falling over, but she was determined to pull this off. Everyone who worked under her was going to be watching that door, waiting for her to emerge.

"Are you ready?" Katara asked. She was standing incredibly close just in case Toph started to tip over, but Toph had no intention of her services being needed.

Toph nodded and she felt Sokka push the wheelchair forward.

There was a massive cheer when Toph was pushed through the door, baby in hand. She grinned widely as Katara struggled to keep Bumi from barreling into her.

"Congratulations Chief!" she heard from multiple sources around the room.

"She looks healthy!"

"She's beautiful!"

"Name her after me, Chief!" called a female voice.

"Ling? That's a stupid name!" This was followed by a smack. Heng never knew when to keep his mouth shut.

Sokka didn't slow his stride for a second, and as soon as they were out of sight of her officers, Katara gently pulled the baby out of her arms.

"That was stupid and reckless," she said. "And I really shouldn't have expected anything less from you."

* * *

 _Click!_

 _Whine..._

"I can't believe you lugged that camera all the way over here," Aang said. "Toph isn't even going to appreciate it!"

"Hey, this one looks like it'll turn out pretty good," Sokka said.

"Well _that's_ a relief," Toph replied sarcastically. "I wouldn't want anyone taking bad pictures of me."

"Haha, funny." Sokka responded. "But it's not for you. It's for her."

Toph was holding Lin gently in her arms. She was feeling much stronger today, and was happily receiving a lengthy visit from her friends.

"One day old and you're already being showered with gifts. Try not to grow up _too_ spoiled, huh?" Toph said. Lin turned her head, burying her face in Toph's shirt. "See Sokka? She doesn't care about your stupid picture."

"I know you don't care for it, but please take care of it. For her."

"Fine... you big sap." She could practically hear Sokka's grin. "Besides, I can't throw out the only good photograph to ever be taken of me. I might just have to put it up on The Wall."

"I brought you guys something as well," said Katara. Toph felt something placed on the bed next to her. She reached out a hand to feel it.

"A book? Katara, aren't you forgetting something?"

"I know, I know. I had Guo transcribe it into Braille."

Toph's fingers finally found the bumps that had been put in place for the title.

 _The Lonely Pigmy Puma_

"So you can read her bedtime stories as she gets older. And you can do this with other books too!"

Toph felt tears in her eyes. She was actually going to be able to read to her child! That was something Toph had never even dreamed was going to be possible. She clutched the baby tightly in her arms.

"Thanks," she said, smiling sincerely.

In that moment, with her friends at her side and her child held securely in her embrace, Toph didn't care that Kanto wasn't with her. This was her baby, and she was a mother now. She had no doubt in her mind that she could do this. Alone.

And she would have it no other way.

 **The End**


End file.
